Almost
by Engineer Wolf
Summary: Hermione tries to solve Blaise Zabini. Post DH. gen fiction. No romance. written for 1 Pairing, 1 Prompt Challenge. My First Fan Fiction. criticism appreciated.


A/N: My First fanfiction. Written for 1 Pairing, 1 Prompt Challenge by Fire The Canon on Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges. My theme was **Almost **and pairing was **Hermione/Blaise**. This is gen story. in fact Blaise isn't in scene. Posting it with some cleanup.

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Hermione Granger sat in her office in the Ministry of magic. The office she shared with her two beast friends from school, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. It was the time after the war, time of rebuilding. Interim minister Kingsley Shacklebolt, was doing everything in his power to bring order and justice back in magical England.

After the war pure blood society was in shambles, most of the families suffered losses, either death or imprisonment. Taking advantage of the situation, the new minister had pushed for reforms in the processing of ministry. The Gryffindor golden trio was part of that. They had been offered permanent jobs at ministry as Aurors. All three of them had declined. Harry wanted to work for Auror office, but he wanted to do it right way. He was going to pass his N.E.W.T.s, externally of course. He wasn't ready to go back where it all happened. Then he would go through proper Auror training and then only he would accept Auror's badge. He wasn't going to allow anyone to object his appointment. Ron would probably do the same, but he also wanted to help George with joke shop. Fred's death had devastated his twin the most. Hermione wasn't interested in being Auror, she would first go back to school, to complete her seventh year. Probably she would be the only one from her year doing so. But she didn't want to miss out on her education. She wanted to work in Wizengamot. She wanted to build better justice system for wizarding world.

But they had accepted a summer internship, it was common enough. Even Fudge administration had offered Hogwarts students one of those. But the real job they were doing was reviewing all the last year. Each and every Slytherin, death eater, suspect death eater, pure blood witch, wizard and children alike, even a street thief were on their scrutiny. They were assisted in the task by the DA, or most of the DA members. As always, Harry was in charge of the complete operation. He would answer to Minister Shacklebolt.

Harry and Ron were out on some fact finding mission. She had decided to stay in office, processing the information she had received. Harry's methods were odd but effective. In surprising move he had recruited Parvati Patil, as one of the informants. He said he would have preferred Lavender, but she was in St. Mungo's, recovering from werewolf wounds. But she worked off-line, giving inputs when she was awake to do so. Hermione knew, Parvati and Lavender were gossip queens of Hogwarts. They knew about people's personal lives more than the person themselves. She had in her hand the report from Parvati. The file was pink, and even though it was just a regular cardboard file, it had satiny feel to it. Title read Zabini, Blaise. Satiny file for Zabini, It felt very wrong on so many levels.

Zabini was Slytherin, her year. He was member of Slug club. He was quite boy, kept to himself. And He had supported pure blood agenda. That is all she knew. She was curious to know more. She opened the file from Parvati, and started reading. After she was sure she had all the information, she carefully put it down on desk, it vanished instantly; in truly James Bond way. One evening Harry and Ginny had gone on a date, in muggle London. The next day Harry had introduced automatically vanishing top secrete folders.

The file had said, Zabini, was only son of famously rich and beautiful pureblood witch, whose husbands kept dying under suspicious circumstances and leaving her richer. Blaise's father's identity was indeterminable. Exactly nine months before his birth, Mrs. Zabini's second husband, Magnus Goldstein had died in freak wand explosion; she was married to her third husband, Walter Peasegood within a week. Blaise was the almost son of Magnus and Walter.

Zabini was never member of any gang. He hadn't had any close set of friends in his Hogwarts life. He was friendly with Malfoy and Parkinson, but that was only during Voldemort's peak of power. He hadn't shown interest in any of females of Hogwarts. That was shocking according to Parvati, as if sexual attraction was the only thing in life. She would have liked, hard facts in her report, but Harry had insisted that they take gossip and rumors into account. And the minister had agreed, said most of the times rumor's hold grain of truth in them, however tiny it might be. And so she had agreed.

Hogwarts rumor mill had placed Zabini in romantic relationship with Adrian Pucey, suggesting he wasn't interested in females, because he swung the other way. So almost gay was in the report too. Although, one rumor said he was in a romantic relationship, with rich and beautiful girl from Italy.

Last year when death eaters and death eater wannabes were running rampant in Hogwarts, Zabini had been his usual self. He hadn't participated in Carrows sponsored torture of non-Slytherin students. He was firmly in league with Malfoy and his gang. He had taunted and bragged, at opportune moment; but he had not actively caused harm. At the end, when School was evacuated, he had left quietly. He wasn't involved in battle at all. He wasn't a death eater; special agent Longbottom had confirmed no mark! After the battle Zabini was under surveillance and he will be until Harry and Kingsley said so. He wasn't in contact of any death eaters. In fact, He wasn't in contact of anybody. He kept to himself, never visited anyone. No one visited him. He had said appropriate lines for a Slytherin, both during and after the war. Weather he believed them or not, she couldn't tell.

"Hey, Hermione!" greeted Harry.

"Hi, Harry. Where is Ron?" Hermione asked.

"He went to the joke shop. He said he will meet you in the evening?"

"Oh, all right then."

"What have you been working on?" asked Harry.

"Zabini! Parvati sent her report. I read it, and it vanished!" She told him exasperatedly

"So new security system is working then? Good. So what are your thoughts?"

Hermione thought, shrugged and replied, "Zambini is an Almost kind of guy."

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A/N: Please review and tell me what you thought.


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